Inspired by the importance of professional networking for college students, the College Council’s Pathways Committee is launching a Student Involvement in Professional Success (SIPS) event. The event mirrors KEGS, the Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) Council’s premier networking series for BBA students. The Pathways Committee is inviting Emory College of Arts and Sciences (ECAS) students and faculty to connect outside the classroom for the first installation of SIPS on April 24.
According to the College Council Third-Year Legislator and Pathways Committee Chair Ayush Kothari (26C), the event aims to create an environment where students can build connections in a more casual setting while fostering community between faculty and students.
Kothari said the event will expand students’ mindsets on traditional career pathways and help them find professors and alumni who can support them on their professional journey.
Faculty and administrators representing various ECAS departments will be invited to SIPS to engage with students, according to Kothari. He added that the event will be open to all students in ECAS.
Kothari developed SIPS after seeing similar networking events at the Goizueta Business School. He said that the Pathways Committee has been planning the event for the past two semesters and hopes to challenge students’ view of networking as a daunting process.
“One of the primary motivations for this event was understanding that oftentimes students feel that networking is very complex and it’s very rigid,” Kothari said. “Sometimes they have difficulty engaging in these spaces.”
Kothari said that bringing professors and students together could help students build upon their professional goals.
“By providing a more informal opportunity to speak with professors outside of classroom or office hour settings, speaking with their peers and getting conversations going, we can really help broaden perspectives and help students find different career opportunities and paths that they hadn’t previously considered,” Kothari said.
College Council Oxford Legislator Dantrell Cheng (24Ox, 26C) explained that the Pathways Committee is a liaison between students and the Pathways Center, helping organize the new event series. The Pathways Center focuses on career-driven resources, providing students connections to alumni and faculty and aiding in undergraduate research, scholarships and advising.
College Council Fourth-Year Legislator Aanya Sethi (23Ox, 25C) said the committee is meeting with the Pathways Center weekly to plan the event and to discuss logistics. Still, Kothari said the committee is maintaining some control over the direction of the event.
“The Pathways Center has taken an operational lead on this, but they have given us a lot of flexibility on how we program the event,” Kothari said. “Our focus is a lot more on how are students engaging in this space.”
In order to help expand students’ views of various careers, College Council First-Year Legislator Aidan Park (28C) said that the Committee is interested in featuring professors whose resumes diverge from traditional career paths. For example, he mentioned Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Chemistry Dennis Liotta, whose work includes 18 U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved antiviral therapeutics and over 100 patents.
“We’re thinking of inviting Dr. Liotta,” Park said. “Formally, Chemistry would fall under pre-med, but to diverge along that straight pre-med pathway, we’re showing pharmaceutical drug development, something that isn’t necessarily just an MD career pathway.”
Kothari said that he hopes the event will build community and support students who find the college large and challenging for making connections. The opportunity would allow students to meet a diverse group of faculty members.
“Ultimately, we want all faculty within the College to help promote this event and really generate student excitement, something that can help bring a greater sense of community,” Kothari said.
College Council President-Elect Vlad Senenko (27C) said he hopes College Council and the Pathways Committee will work to hold this event frequently. In order to make this happen, Kothari said the Pathways Committee is encouraging as many College Council members as possible to get involved with SIPS.
“It’s definitely going to be something that we’d like to carry on as a College Council legacy in a sense, and make a tradition perhaps every year or every semester,” Senenko said.
Park said that some of the previous partnerships between Emory University and Atlanta organizations have faded in engagement and resources, and that he hopes to revitalize them in the future. He hopes to find institutions in and around Atlanta that will support the efforts to continue creating programs and events through the Pathways Center to increase community and cater to student interest.
“I want to, along with [Career and Professional Development] Pathways, just be able to create these programs that existed before for college students and a lot of the organizations outside of Emory,” Park said. “The focus for me, that I envision, is building on the resources that we may have lost and just creating new areas where students can engage that they currently don’t have.”
Senenko said that through hosting events like SIPS, College Council can fulfill its mission of supporting and directly engaging ECAS students.
“We’ll be continuing on into next year, so that way we’ll have some continuity in terms of the people involved in the planning,” Kothari said. “Having some of that experience with this first run of the event can help bring better perspectives as planning comes on for the next academic year.”
